Maybe you’ve seen that TikTok video, where girls list fictional women who feel just like us. Not perfect, not polished, not “girlboss-coded,” but real. Messy, emotional and confused. Loving too hard, healing too slow, dreaming too big. These are the female protagonists who make you pause the screen and think: “Oh. That’s literally me.”
So here are seven female characters who will make you feel understood, validated, and beautifully human.
1. VIVIAN (MOXIE)
Vivian Carter from Moxie (2021) is the definition of a quiet girl finally speaking up. She starts off doing everything “right” and expected, until she stumbles upon her mom’s rebellious feminist past and decides to publish an anonymous zine calling out sexism at school.
What makes Vivian perfectly relatable is not her activism itself, but the messiness of it. She gets things wrong. She hurts people unintentionally. She learns about intersectionality the hard way. She wants to be good, but she’s still growing into her voice.
Vivian embodies that moment when you care so much it almost overwhelms you, an energy every young woman has felt but rarely sees portrayed so honestly.
2. JANE VILLANUEVA (JANE THE VIRGIN)
Jane Villanueva is the classic overachiever — balancing dreams, family, relationships, and the unbearable pressure of being a “good girl”. She wants to be a writer, to honor her family and find love, but not at the cost of herself. She is every woman who has ever tried to make the “right” choice and still ended up heartbroken, confused, or doubting her path.
Jane’s relatability lies in her contradictions: romantic yet pragmatic, ambitious yet scared, grounded yet impulsive. She shows that even the most put-together girls are a swirl of fears, hope, and emotions underneath.
3. KIMMY SCHMIDT (UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT)
Kimmy Schmidt from the sitcom Unbreakable Kimm Schmidt (2015), survived to something horrific, but she refuses to let her trauma define her present. She moves to New York with an optimism that is almost delusional, and yet, everything works out.
What makes Kimmy relatable is her dual nature: she’s healing while pretending she’s fine, smiling while still processing her past, embracing life while learning how to be part of it again. She is the woman who says “I’m okay!” even when she doesn’t fully believe it yet. And somehow, that makes her incredibly real.
4. ALMA NUTHALL (ALMA’S NOT NORMAL)
Alma Nuthall is messy, chaotic, emotional and painfully honest, in a way that feels refreshing. She comes from a complicated family and has been through the foster system. Alma dreams of a creative career even though nothing around her makes it easy.
She is constantly trying — even when the world seems designed to break her spirit. Alma’s intensity is exactly what makes her feel so human: she laughs too loud, she cries too hard, she loves too much. This character represents every woman who has ever felt “too much” for this world, and yet, refuses to shrink herself.
5. NELLA ROGERS (THE OTHER BLACK GIRL)
Nella Rogers is the epitome of “the only one in the room” as the only black woman at her publishing house, until Hazel arrives. Nella battles the unspoken pressures of representation, microaggressions, and the emotional weight of wanting to belong without betraying herself.
Her relatability lies in her quiet internal war: Am I good enough? Am I being paranoid? Should I speak up, or stay safe? She captures the emotional exhaustion of being a young woman trying to rise in a system that wasn’t built for her and the fear of losing yourself in the process.
6. EVE & VILLANELLE (KILLING EVE)
In Killing Eve (2018), we meet two protagonists who are both equally chaotic and layered:
Villanelle: the stylish assassin who masks her vulnerability with cruelty. And Eve: the intelligence officer whose obsession with Villanelle reveals to be a part of herself she never wanted to confront.
What makes them relatable isn’t the murder or espionage, but the emotional dissonance. The feeling of wanting something you can’t quite name, of facing a desire you don’t fully understand, or of seeing a version of yourself reflected in someone unexpected. Their relationship mirrors the complexity of being a woman with contradictions: rational and impulsive, craving control yet drawn to chaos.
7. CARRIE BRADSHAW (SEX AND THE CITY)
Even though she’s iconic, Carrie Bradshaw is a disaster — emotionally inconsistent, impulsive, needy, and often the architect of her own heartbreak.
However, Carrie may be relatable exactly because she is not aspirational, she is raw. She makes mistakes you’ve probably already made (or might still make): falling for the wrong man, overspending, choosing romance over logic, hurting friends, fearing adulthood. Carrie is messy in the exact same way so many women are, even if we don’t admit it out loud. She’ll make you feel seen by showing that figuring yourself out in your 20s and 30s is a slow, deeply human process.
All these protagonists share the same secret power: they’re flawed. Not in the cute, scripted way, but in the beautifully chaotic way real women are. They’re anxious, joyful, frustrated, hopeful, lost and brilliant all at once.
They’re growing. They’re unraveling. They’re rebuilding. And while watching them, we find a part of ourselves we usually keep hidden — Fictional women make us feel seen because they reflect the truth: Being a woman can be messy and overwhelming, but is also magical and worth every second. You are not alone in any of it.
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The article above was edited by Alyah Gomes.
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